High-level Overview

Issues:

• Summer slide, summer brain drain, or summer learning loss especially in Mathematics
• High monetary cost of enrichment programs
• Scheduling and transportation effort for summer enrichment and sports programs
• No systematic religious education in outside summer programs (and no Sunday school)

Negative Consequences:

• Kids waste time on electronic devices rather than studies, physical activities, sports, and social interactions.
• As a community, we do not develop human and physical resources if we keep paying others for programs that do not exactly fit our needs

What to Do:

• Provide a healthy set of activities at one place. Kids get to learn about deen, pray on time, and interact among each other.
• Religious programs---recitation, hifz, tajweed, tafseer
• Language programs---Arabic, English debate, rhetoric, and logical argumentation
• Academic enrichment
• Physical activities and sports
• Provide high quality programs and charge market rates. 
• Monetary costs may be same as outside programs but the scheduling and transportation burden would be lower.
• Provide need-based scholarships but request parents or guardians to provide volunteer services in return (if possible). 

List of Potential Programs

Create a list of potential programs to offer and then choose feasible programs:

1. Quran—Recitation, Memorization, and Tafseer
2. Competition Mathematics
3. Robotics
4. Classical Arabic
5. Physical Education (Karate / Tae-Kwon-Do, Soccer, Basketball)
6. Debates and Public Speaking (logical argumentation, rhetoric)
7. Crafts
8. Volunteering and Public service (food banks, medical clinic in Braddock)

Planning and Execution

1. Assemble the organizing team and choose the overall summer program leader
2. Decide on student age groups and the capacity in each program
3. Start with an initial set of potential programs and assign ownership to one person on the team. Explore feasibility of the programs and decide on the a final list of programs to offer
4. Announce the program by March 2016 and start accepting application
5. Identify professional coaches or teachers for the programs. Some of the teachers can be online. Estimate costs---for instance, what would be the cost for hiring QuranLive instructors to teach one-to-one lessons on Skype or the cost of Taekwondo instructor
6. Recruit a team of volunteers for running the programs (e.g. coordinating with Studio Arabiya) and for supervising children. For instance, hire college freshman or high school students from our community for proctoring students in the Summer program
7. Prepare facilities and equipment
• Audio-visual classrooms (large screen, wide-angle camera) for online group classes
• Football field, basketball court, Taekwondo dojang
• High-bandwidth internet for running online programs
• Laptops with Skype for online one-to-one Arabic and Quran classes
8. Estimate tuition fees. Decide on rules for need-based scholarships, discounts, payment plans, etc.

Quran—Recitation, Memorization, and Tafseer

Recitation and Hifz:
https://quranlive.com or Studio Arabiya—one-to-one Skype sessions under supervision of MCCGP proctors.

Teacher Training with Imam Abdur-Rehman (if available): 
Boys, who already have good tajweed, complete a course with Imam Abdur-Rehman to receive "permission to teach".

Teacher Training with Female Qari:
Girls, who already have good tajweed, complete a course with female Qari to receive "permission to teach". For example, Studio Arabiya has instructors who can give "permission to teach".

Tafseer sessions:
Live online (e.g. https://darulhikmah.com/) or recorded tafseer sessions (e.g. Bayyinah) under supervision of an adult. The live instructor can engage in discussion and Q&A. For recorded tafseer sessions, the adult class supervisor can run a discussion and follow on Q&A. The adult supervisor should formally study with a teacher to avoid doing tafseer based on personal opinions.